The Frantic Antic

6 Nov 2007

The escape of the straw children.

I grew into the walls of a house whose pattern and character I knew intimately, I knew them all in fact, all the houses; not because I had seen them all you see, but because they were all so much the same.
A builder of straw children would taunt you to disagree, taunt you in all ernest to do so, knowing full well the fragile nature and edges of a soul so young; or so it would have seemed.
But souls are not young or old or limited in others ways assumed, and what would they be if not fragile and what would their center oppose if it could? But yes, once again the walls and the children of straw.
How could one not know of the walls of others` when all are the same, one need not actually see them to know – so knowing is itself proof of a voyeur’s presence within them? and so the children grow and their knowledge of the walls contain them; or so it would have seemed.
In time the walls changed ever so slightly and the children with them; the children who had become the walls agreeing with them as their souls told them though the walls no longer agreed amongst themselves; or so it would have seemed.
And the builder of straw children? well, assumptions must be made you see, because to kill the doubt is to kill the lie, and to kill the lie is deny the voyeur’s presence and in that the walls no longer will contain the child of straw; or so it would have seemed.
But innocence is the soul`s smile, indulgent for a time, at what was not the same from wall to wall, from child to child; and assumptions must be made you see, and sleight of circumstance’s hand would shed its light from day to day into the shadow of an empty life and light a child’s way here and there.
In time the walls no longer held, in fact they never had, but their way to world was lit here and there – the children’s that is; and the builder of straw children? ah! such confusion; because assumptions must be made you see and though they started so much the same they are no longer, the walls that is, and to kill the doubt would kill the lie – and the choice is the emptiness the walls now contain, though not all of them. The children that remain are the walls closing in, you see, on the voyeur’s empty life – and the darkness is the light and the darkness knew it not.

⇑ by Rick Silletti in Darklings

15 Aug 2006

Haiku 25

the shadow of a wing
   in a dark flame’s heat…
  wind of the dark king.

⇑ by Rick Silletti in Haiku and Darklings

31 Jul 2006

Adrift in the future's shadow.

adrift in the future’s shadow my mind wanders, morose and aimless.
i wonder at how what has been will effect what will be.
how the roof over my head makes me comfortable now for tomorrow,
how too many tomorrows will make me tired,
how too many decades of tomorrows will make me weak,
how too many ages of tomorrows will make my kind absent;
how the wheels on my car make me able now for tomorrow,
how too many tomorrows will make me lazy,
how too many decades of tomorrows will make me unable,
how too many ages of tomorrows will make my kind absent.
none approach the future but that they grow old and fade
in the shadow’s way, stretched and thin and pale;
and of all we will not be here to see the end of ends
as the spectators we so easily feel we have the right to be,
and there is no road returning.

⇑ by Rick Silletti in Darklings and Poetry

26 Jul 2006

An Irony of Realities

Faces of Hope

I read today of the history of Palestine and Israel. I’ve always been somewhat unaware of the sources of todays conflicts in the middle east and with Israel; I only knew that the violence has been almost continuos most of my life.
Given that the sources of most western religious practices take their home there initially, it makes me wonder at the concept of holiness anywhere.

The site was protected, by the way, under a Creative Commons License… that much at least we have settled; and, of course, no one is losing track of the dollars and cents – only the lives.

⇑ by Rick Silletti in Darklings and Opinion